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A Park, an Oyster Farm and Science: Epilogue

Associated PressWorkers from Drakes Bay Oyster Company bring in a load of freshly harvested oysters at Point Reyes National Seashore. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced last week that the operation would have to shut down.

In the end, after all the money spent on the science — on cameras whose images were not carefully examined, on reports that misrepresented scientific studies, and on repeated investigations of flawed scientific work — the Interior Department’s decision not to renew an oyster company’s lease to operate within Point Reyes National Seashore largely sidestepped any scientific issues.

In the final memorandum supportinghis action, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar relied mainly on real estate contracts signed 40 years ago. He said that studies on the oyster farm’s impact on the environment (all riddled with controversy) were helpful but “not material to the legal and policy factors which provide the central basis for my decision.”

His reasoning: commercial operations are incompatible with wilderness, and Congress wanted this to be a wilderness.

The legal and legislative arguments on which he relied had always been at his disposal, and Mr. Salazar apparently did not find the scientific conclusions robust enough to be the main argument for his decision to close the farm.

So what was all the science, good or bad, for?

The federal government spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on studies aimed at making a clear scientific case against the farm’s continued operation and on various critiques of the self-same science.
Beyond that, flaws identified in the science may also have cost the National Park Service, particularly the Point Reyes scientists and their defenders, a substantial loss of professional credibility. One might ask if the studies would have been deemed more relevant if they had conclusively found that the oyster farm caused serious environmental harm.

So, what has been gained? About 1,300 acres of marine wilderness in a lovely coastal spot. Drake’s Estero could not be designated a wilderness area until the last non-wilderness activity, the oyster farm, was removed.

What practical difference does this designation mean to visitors? They won’t have to listen to oyster boats or the noise of an oyster cannery. And they won’t get to eat fresh oysters.

What has been lost? About 40 percent of California’s oyster production, plus the jobs of oyster workers and the homes of some of them, according to Kevin Lunny, a local rancher who is the owner of Drake’s Bay Oyster Company. And any semblance of harmony in the bitterly riven communities around the park and the farm.

The hyperbole accompanying the debate over the site’s future was bewilderingly grandiose.

Local environmental groups supporting the end of the oyster farm’s lease argued that if Drake’s Estero was not converted to wilderness at the first opportunity, all park service wilderness everywhere would be threatened. This position ignores the fact (to give one example) that Congress actually rescinded a wilderness designation from small sections of a national park on Cumberland Island in Georgia, which did not cause the cascading loss of wilderness elsewhere.

On the linguistic front, two adjectives were repeatedly wielded by wilderness advocates in pressing their case. The estuary was deemed “pristine,” with all those connotations of purity, even though people have been working there in one way or another for 100 years. It was also called “iconic,” as if a small Northern California inlet were sacred to a vast number of people. (One wilderness advocate has repeatedly called it “a church.”)

The oyster farm was predictably described as “industrial” and “commercial,” as if it were a giant factory, not a modest mariculture business.

And when the science of National Park Service employees was found to be lacking, some wilderness advocates cheered the news that highly critical reviews of the science did not find actual scientific misconduct.

It felt like hearing a parent rejoice over a D on a report card — he passed! A year ago, a Marine Mammal Commission review of the park’s scientific research on the oyster farm’s effect on harbor seal populations flatly stated that “the data supporting the above analyses are scant and have been stretched to their limit.”

On the other hand, critics of the National Park Service’s science were so vehement that they edged toward outright personal attacks on both the scientists and their supervisors.

A legal challenge to Interior’s decision was filed late Monday, which may delay an end to the rhetorical fireworks. But there are signs that a sense of perspective may be making a comeback.

Amy Trainer, the executive director of the West Marin Environmental Action Committee, whose organization was one of the most ardent supporters of a wilderness designation, said she has pledges of $5,000 toward a fund to help the oyster workers make a transition to new livelihoods, if need be.

“Right now, part of the healing process locally is making sure the workers are taken care of,” she said.

That’s a new approach.

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